In today's market for camera and camera modules in mobile phones, customers have a variation of requests in design and construction. In particular, there are a number of requests regarding camera lens, housing and barrel design. Camera lens barrel design is important and has been a primary focus of manufacturers to provide flexibility in designs. Lens barrel design has evolved differently in various countries based on differing customer demands. For instance, the lens barrel design trends are different between Europe and Japan. Japanese customers often prefer a design in which there is not any protection on the camera module itself or integral to the cameral barrel since a cover plastic may be built into the phone housing to protect the lens from damage. This technique or camera barrel design has the advantage of allowing Japanese manufacturers to design thinner camera modules. In contrast, European manufacturers often prefer to have modules that provide better protection to their camera and camera lenses. For instance, these modules often add a thicker cover glass/plastic on top of the camera barrel and not the housing. This adds a thickness to the module and camera barrel often increasing the z-height. In addition, the European design also favors the use of a cover glass in place of a cover plastic to protect the lens.
There are three major camera barrel designs in use today with mobile phones. The first design includes a simple threaded barrel design. A cover plastic or glass must be used external to the barrel and increases the size or z-height of the module when it is assembled. This presents a problem in manufacturing and flexibility to the customer. For instance, if a customer purchases this design, he is often limited in his options of lens as well as covers that may be employed.
A second camera barrel design includes the use of a threaded barrel with a built in flange or gear for turning the lens during focusing. This design also provides a problem to manufacture and does not allow for ease of integration of a cover glass or cover plastic.
A third camera barrel design includes the use of a threaded barrel and gasket. Again this design suffers from a similar limitation in that the height of the camera barrel or module is affected if a cover glass or plastic is added to the design.
For these reasons, it is desired to provide a simple manufacture design that allows flexibility of camera barrel design for a variety of types of camera designs for use with mobile telephones. In addition, it would be desirable to provide a module or camera barrel design that is easy to manufacture, does not affect the overall camera z-height and which allows for quick and easy assembly and disassembly. These and other problems experienced by the art are obviated by the present invention.